How Companies Win

How Companies Win is an in-depth look at a present-day issue that currently has many companies in a quandary.  Authors Kash and Calhoun invested a lot of time and effort into investigating what may be causing many companies to miss the boat within their own industries.  They found that too much effort was spent on the supply chain and not enough time was spent looking for the demand chain.  Using many relevant, present-day case studies, they show us how large companies have completely missed not only their market, but also the true demand and almost went out of business because of it.  McDonald’s was sliding off the page until they realized that they needed to meet the demand of a broader audience by slowing the rate of expansion, adding increased value, increasing cleanliness, and improving customer service.  After making these changes, the average order went from $5 to $12, a huge save for the company in a short period of time. They decided to scale back their plan of opening 1000 new restaurants per year to only 500 instead.  My favorite quote from this book is “In McDonald’s headlong rush to become bigger, to dominate the global market, it had lost track of its parallel need to also become better at understanding consumers’ latent and emerging demand.”  Another great example in the book was the Ball Park Frank study.  After finding that they were focusing on the wrong market, the male barbequer, they switched to the health conscious mother of teens and saved the company from the dwindling sales problem they were experiencing.  For both of these companies, the supply chain stayed the same; the switch to find the demand chain is what made the difference.  One of the main themes of the book seems to be that companies need to be willing to accept that they need to be willing to adjust to current needs in order to succeed.  In the conclusion of the book, the authors write, “Evolving from a supply-driven company to a demand-driven company is as much a matter of attitude as it is a process.” Check it out here.